The Right to Vote

Printer-friendly version

World War I opened the North to Southern migration. The posture of the nation during World War I was isolationism laced with paranoia and racism. European immigration was nearly halted during the War with Congressional passage of the Immigration Act of 1924. Prior to the War the source of the industrial labor force was immigrants, largely from nations the U.S. was now at war with - a labor force the nation refused to risk its security on. (Side note: Remember that Booker T. Washington addressed immigration in The Atlanta Exposition Speech.)

Industrialists who had previously rejected Blacks as undisciplined, ignorant, and lazy, now sought them en masse. The Chicago Defender was instrumental in the mass exodus from the South to the North. For black men, especially in the South, the promise of employment in relatively lucrative jobs, was an opportunity they could not pass up. For black women, the opportunity for �nancial success was not as great, but domestic work paid better and brought with it more opportunity than working in Southern �elds.

Other factors contributed to Blacks' desire to �ee the South:

1. The North was seen as the Promised Land. Southern Blacks saw Northern cities as free of racism, lynchings and legal segregation.

2. Many sharecroppers were �nancially devastated in the early 20th century by an infestation of boll weevils. The boll weevil is a tiny insect that feasts on cotton. Keep in mind that sharecropping created a cycle of debt for the sharecropper - therefore, in years of bad harvest the debt increase was tremendous.

3. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 displaced hundreds of thousands of black farm workers.

The infusion of Southern Blacks into Northern black communities created tension, to put it mildly. Southern Blacks were seen as uncouth, uneducated, and rude. Much of the Southern culture was transplanted with the migrants to the North. Northern Whites rejected these new migrants and so did Blacks raised in the North. In Detroit, the National Urban League produced pamphlets to assist Southern immigrants with their transition to the North. A pamphlet entitled Helpful Hints for Migrants to Detroit published in 1918 included the picture on this page, displaying appropriate public dress and posture. The pamphlet was complete with instructions many would characterize as offensive, which included:

Don't carry on loud conversations or use vulgar or obscene language on the street cars, streets or public places. Remember this hurts us as a race. Don't think you can hold your job unless you are on time, industrious, ef�cient and sober. Don't make loud or unnecessary noise going to and from baseball games. If the parks are taken away from you it will be your own fault. Don't stay away from work every time someone gives a picnic or boat ride. Stay on your job. Others do. Don't go about the streets or on the streetcars with bungalow aprons, boudoir caps and house slippers. Wear regular street clothes when you go into the streets. Don't fail to meet the teachers of your children. Keep in touch with them. Every hateful thing that your child says about the teacher is not true.

Criticism of Southern Blacks also included how they worshipped. Southern Blacks were closely aligned with evangelical faith systems that were noted for their emotional style of preaching, high praise in their worship, and "getting happy." For the educated elite of the North (or so they thought of themselves) church didn't take all that!